What I Have Taken Long Before
by starfishstar
Summary: Twelve years is a great deal left unsaid. "Lie low at Lupin's" is only the very beginning. (Part of a series with "Skellig, Azkaban, Albion, Éire" and "Cast Your Soul to the Sea," but also stands alone.)
1. Chapter 1

**Notes: **You know how "lie low at Lupin's" (rapprochement and reconnection between Remus and Sirius, following that fateful line of Dumbledore's at the end of GoF) became basically an entire sub-genre of Remus/Sirius fic? Well, I've read many such stories – and don't get me wrong, loved lots of them, too – but I don't think I've ever read one about Remus and Sirius during that period that had them as friends rather than lovers.

And since I've developed quite an interest in writing about the friendship between Remus and Sirius anyway, I thought I'd give it a try!

In a sense, this could be considered a sequel to "Skellig, Azkaban, Albion, Éire" and "Cast Your Soul to the Sea," but only in terms of the characters and themes. You don't need to have read those stories first.

Thank you to stereolightning for a thoughtful, helpful beta read!

. . . . .

_I will write you letters that  
Explain the way I'm thinking now  
I will return to you  
What I have taken long before  
I will return again  
When it gets dark and day is done  
And lay me down  
In the hollowed ground  
Down by your side I will stay_

–_The Frames_

. . . . .

CHAPTER ONE

Sirius still looked like hell, Remus thought. He'd been out of Azkaban for two years now, but he'd spent most of that on the run – first trying to get into Hogwarts, then trying to get far away as possible from Great Britain and the Ministry's jurisdiction, then back again to hide on the outskirts of Hogsmeade so he could be there for Harry, because Sirius had always had more loyalty than sense.

"Hey," Sirius said, leaning wearily against the doorjamb.

These past couple weeks, Remus knew, Sirius had been rounding up the old Order – what was left of it – on Dumbledore's behalf. It was all starting up again: the war, the danger, the need for secrecy. Only this time it was not their own generation that stood to lose most, but the generation of their friends' children.

"Come in," Remus said, stepping back to make room in the narrow entryway. Sirius stepped inside and glanced around.

The place wasn't much, but it was more than Remus had been able to call home at many points in his life. After the disastrous end to his Hogwarts teaching year he'd come back here to Yorkshire, which was where he'd been scraping by when Dumbledore first tracked him down about the Defence post.

"I figured you would turn up here one of these days. Dumbledore sent an owl saying you would be needing a place to stay," Remus said.

"Only if you don't mind," Sirius said. "D'you mind, Moony?"

Remus' heart contracted a little at the sound of that old nickname. Of course he didn't mind. How often had he, Remus, been the one with a home to offer, the one in a position to be able to take in a friend?

"Of course not," he said, his voice coming out a little gruff. "It's not much, what I've got here, but it's a roof over your head, at least."

He stepped around Sirius to close the front door, as always having to shove hard to get it to close that last bit over the warped wood of the threshold.

Sirius, Remus noted, didn't have luggage or even a cloak. He had a wand, though, still gripped in his right hand even now that he was inside. It wasn't his old wand, from before Azkaban. Perhaps Dumbledore had arranged to have a new one made discreetly.

"Food or shower? Or tea?" Remus asked, because he knew what his own priorities were, when he found himself finally back in a proper house for the first time in a long time.

Sirius gave him a ghost of a crooked smile. "Can I have all three?"

"Well, yes, obviously. But which first?"

"Oh, something to eat would be fantastic. Only if you've got something to hand already, I mean, if it's no trouble."

Who was this new Sirius, who was polite and concerned about inconveniencing his host?

"No trouble. I made a big pot of stew, knowing you might be coming. It's nothing fancy, though, I warn you. I didn't have much in the house."

"I'm not worried," Sirius said. "I know you – you've always been good at making do with almost nothing."

Remus wasn't entirely sure he took that as a compliment, though Sirius seemed to mean it as one. If Remus had grown skilled over the years at making do with little, it certainly wasn't by choice.

"Dinner first, then?" was all he said.

Sirius seemed to struggle with the decision. "Shower," he said at last. "I'm really not fit to be a dinner guest otherwise."

"All right," Remus said. "Bath's this way."

He showed Sirius down the hall to the cottage's grotty bathroom, with its mildewed walls and rusted old showerhead.

"Not exactly luxury," Remus said. "But there's hot water, at least."

He turned to see that Sirius' eyes had positively lit up at the sight. "A shower _is_ luxury, Moony, you have no idea," he breathed, and Remus couldn't help the wry thought that the last years truly must have been bad if Sirius got this excited over British plumbing.

"There are towels in the cupboard over there," he said. "And I'll leave some clean clothes outside the door. Take your time. I'll go heat up the stew."

"Sounds heavenly, honestly," Sirius said, and Remus regretted his previous uncharitable thought. Sirius, too, had clearly got good at making do with almost nothing.

By the time Sirius emerged from the shower in a baggy borrowed jumper of Remus', his long, black hair wet and dripping and a contented smile across his face, Remus had set out bowls on the table and a loaf of the hearty, wholemeal bread he bought fresh from a baker in the village, one of his few little luxuries.

They sat down at the table together, and for a moment Sirius simply leaned his face over his stew, closed his eyes and inhaled. "Marvellous," he murmured. "Try living on rats for a while, you'll see what I'm talking about."

Remus pushed aside that unpleasant image – he himself was hardly a one to talk, anyway, given the sorts of things he'd eaten over the years while in his transformed state – and picked up his spoon.

Sirius attacked his own food, then seemed to notice his atrocious table manners and forced himself to slow down.

"So what is it you've been doing up here, anyway?" Sirius asked, once he was on his second bowl of stew and no longer seemed to need to inhale his food all at once.

Remus shrugged, as always a little discomfited at having to describe the itinerant, hand-to-mouth existence he led.

"I tutor some of the children in the village in various school subjects. It's a Muggle village, so all they know is that I'm a bit of a recluse and often take ill. They've no reason to think to connect the flare-ups of my illness to the cycles of the moon. This is where I was before I went to teach at Hogwarts, and rather astonishingly it seems I hadn't burned all my bridges here, so it was as reasonable a place as any to come back to. It's not much of a living, but I get by."

_And anywhere in the wizarding world wasn't really an option anymore,_ he didn't add. _Not after my secret went public at Hogwarts._

Sirius gave him another crooked smile. "Always knew you'd end up as a teacher, one way or another." He gave a laugh like a bark, a familiar sound Remus hadn't forgotten all these years. "Merlin! Remus grows up to be a professor at Hogwarts. James and I called that one, we really did."

Hearing Sirius speak James' name out loud was startling.

Over the years, Remus had sometimes found himself accompanied by the voices of the friends he had lost, by words they might have said. Their imagined voices wove in with his own thoughts in a comfortable way he'd grown used to.

It was Lily's voice that sounded in his head when he was feeling lost or alone, telling him that things would be all right and that maybe he didn't need to take himself so seriously, either. It was James' laughing voice that came to him when he needed cheering up.

But he'd never in all these years let himself imagine Sirius' voice. Why would he? He'd believed the lie, that Sirius had been the traitor.

And now, to be sitting around a table chatting with Sirius, James' name coming up so casually… Of all the things he could never have dreamt he would experience again, that surely ranked high.

Remus shook himself out of his thoughts, and found Sirius watching him closely.

"Sorry," Sirius muttered. "Didn't mean to be flippant."

"Oh – no, of course not," Remus said awkwardly. "Er, tea?"

Sirius perked up. "Tea, yes! What've you got?"

Remus went to the cupboard and looked. He'd hoped against hope that he might still have a tiny bit left of that nice loose-leaf Darjeeling – another small luxury, but one he couldn't always afford – but found it was indeed all gone. He pulled a face and said, "Just the cheap stuff, I'm afraid."

"That'll do me," Sirius said, sounding practically cheerful about it.

Seriously, who was this new Sirius Black who _wasn't_ a snob about tea?

But even with a cup of strong black tea in his hands, Sirius was soon yawning. Remus didn't even ask how many times he'd crossed the country in the last few days, how many times he'd had to Apparate. He could read it in Sirius' face.

"There's a spare bedroom," Remus said, showing Sirius down the hallway. "The roof's falling in and the heat cuts out half the time in the winter, but it's the first place I've had in years that actually has enough space for guests."

He pushed open the door to the spare bedroom and pointed Sirius inside. He'd done the best he could, airing the room and laying out bedding that was freshly laundered, though threadbare.

"Brilliant," Sirius said, turning to Remus with an honest smile on his face. "This is brilliant, Remus. I really appreciate it."

There was a small pause in which both of them were unsure – did they hug, now? Were they that sort of friends? Or did they slap each other on the back? How had it been before, when all of them were so effortlessly comfortable around one another that they didn't even have to think about it?

Finally, Sirius clapped a hand on Remus' shoulder, and Remus nodded and said, "Well, sleep well, then. Let me know if you need anything."

"Won't need anything," Sirius said with a decisive shake of his head. "This is already more than I could've hoped for."

"All right, good, well," Remus said, before Sirius could start thanking him again. "Sleep well. Good night."

"Good night, Moony. Sleep well."


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

When Remus woke the next morning and went to check on Sirius, the guest room door was open and the bed empty. Nor was Sirius in the small kitchen, though telltale signs suggested he'd been through there and made himself a cup of tea.

Remus did the same, then went to look outside.

The cottage was for the most part surrounded by a stand of trees, which in turn bordered on the neighbour's sheep field, but directly in front of the house there was a small patch of open grass, where the morning sun slanted in through the trees.

And in the middle of that clearing, in a patch of sunlight and fast asleep, lay Sirius in his Animagus form. Sirius as Padfoot.

Remus knew Sirius sometimes preferred shifting into his dog form during difficult times. His thoughts were simpler there, he'd once said.

For weeks after the terrible prank Sirius had played at school that had nearly killed Snape, and nearly burdened Remus with a guilt for which he would never have forgiven himself, Sirius had spent every moment he could get away with in his Animagus form. Between that and the way he'd been avoiding Remus generally, Remus had hardly seen him in human shape, except in classes. When he thought now of Sirius during that time, what Remus pictured was not a teenage boy, but a big black dog, cowering and hanging its head as if expecting to be kicked.

And Remus, who never desired to hurt anybody, Remus had sometimes wanted to kick that dog.

Once again, Remus shook himself out of his memories, pushed that thought away. Sirius' cruelly thoughtless schoolboy prank was not even the worst betrayal between the two of them anymore.

_I'm sorry I believed it,_ Remus thought at Sirius' sleeping form. _The lie Peter created when he escaped, that you had been the spy. I, of all people, should have known that was impossible._ Sirius would never have betrayed James. In fact, James was probably the only person about whom that could be said without a shadow of a doubt.

Remus set his teacup down on the stone front step of the cottage, went over and gazed down at Padfoot in his patch of sun. As Remus watched, the dog twitched in his sleep, flicking his ears.

_I know you'll never get those years back_, Remus thought, and standing there in the sunlight, now he was picturing the cold, dank cells of Azkaban, though he'd been trying hard all the past year not to think of exactly that.

Remus crouched down, his knees protesting, and scratched Padfoot behind the ears. The dog sighed in his sleep.

_The past is the past,_ said Lily's voice, rising suddenly inside him. _Neither of you will get those years back, but does it matter, really? You're both here now._

Knowing what to expect now, Remus sat still and waited to see what the James inside his head might have to add.

_Still, though, you _could_ flick him on the nose, just to see if he still wakes up barking when you do that_, suggested James' voice.

Remus stifled his own startled laugh against the back of his hand and stood. He didn't flick Padfoot on the nose, but the fact that the temptation was there at all made him smile.

An hour or so later – his patch of sun must have shifted away, waking him when it left him in the cold shade – Sirius ambled back into the house in human form, looking sleepy and disorientated.

Remus, at the kitchen table writing lesson plans just to have something to do, looked up. Sirius already looked a little more relaxed and well fed than he had even the day before. That was good to see.

"Enjoy your dog-nap?" Remus asked, amused.

"'Dog-nap' sounds like I'm kidnapping dogs," Sirius complained. "I can't kidnap dogs. I _am_ a dog."

Remus smiled. "Did you have any breakfast?"

"Nah, wasn't sure what you kept where, and didn't want to make a mess here."

"I'll make you something," Remus said, starting to rise from his seat.

"No," Sirius said, his voice surprisingly firm. "I'll make _you_ something. You sit down."

Feeling baffled, Remus sat. "Cold cupboard's over there," he offered.

Sirius followed his pointing arm to the cupboard where a cooling charm did the work of keeping perishables fresh – the cottage did come with a Muggle refrigerator, but frankly, why waste electricity when magic could do the same job better? – and poked his head inside. "What d'you want? Eggs?"

"Sure," Remus said, still trying to remember any time he had seen Sirius cook, ever. And wondering if he should worry the results would be poisonous.

In the end, Sirius came through with a fairly passable plate of scrambled eggs, Remus made them more tea, and they sat and ate together.

"Harry had to watch one of his classmates get killed by Voldemort," Sirius said out of the blue.

Remus nodded. He'd heard the news. Cedric Diggory, a pleasant, clever, kind-hearted Hufflepuff boy, who had been a joy to teach. This new war's first casualty.

"I want to _be_ there," Sirius said. "At least when I was in Hogsmeade I could keep an eye on him. Now he's back with his horrible aunt and uncle and we're supposed to just trust Dumbledore that he'll be all right there."

"To be fair, so far he _has_ been all right there," Remus said. "Well, more or less."

"Damn it," Sirius swore. "Damn Dumbledore! Those sorry excuses for human beings are the _last_ people who should have got care of him for even a day, let alone _ten years_."

Remus had nothing to say to counter that.

"Did Dumbledore tell you anything more about his plans?" he asked instead. "How soon we're all to meet, and where?"

Sirius shook his head. "Just to go and let everyone know, and to be ready." Then he frowned at the table and said, not looking at Remus, "I've offered him the use of the Grimmauld Place house."

Remus was startled. "Sorry – what?"

"My parents' house," Sirius growled. "Goddamn mausoleum, that place, but it's just sitting there empty, and it's got about every kind of protection you could throw at a building, Unplottable and all that. It could serve pretty well as a kind of headquarters for the Order, if Dumbledore wants it."

_Yes, but how would you feel being back there? _Remus wanted to ask, but didn't. Sirius had been increasingly unhappy in his parents' house over his years at Hogwarts, until he'd finally had one last screaming match with them and left for good to live with James' family. His childhood home wasn't exactly a place that held a lot of happy memories. In fact, the very idea that Sirius was now the place's owner was discordant and strange. But then again, who else would be? Sirius' brother was dead.

"That's generous of you to offer it for the Order," Remus said, trying to keep his voice neutral.

Sirius only grunted in response.

"And until then?" Remus asked. "Until Dumbledore calls us together, I mean? What are we meant to do for the time being?"

"Enforced holiday!" said Sirius, putting on a halfway successful smile. "Which is not all bad, right? I could sure do with a while of just lying around and letting you fatten me up."

To give Sirius credit, Remus would have had to say that for about a day and a half – the rest of that day and most of the next – Sirius did a credible job of playing the part of a man on holiday.

He did lie in the sun, when there was sun, and wandered the hills and fields around the cottage even when there wasn't. He went into the village and bought them some groceries, which he insisted on paying for. Apparently, he still had something of a supply of gold. He did the washing up and straightened up around the cottage, unasked, and even teased Remus a bit about his work. ("Seriously, Moony, you're not even their real teacher, and you're sitting there preparing entire lessons for them?")

By late evening of that next day, though, Sirius was pacing the cottage.

"Why hasn't Dumbledore sent word?" he demanded. "I stopped at a post office on my way here and sent him an owl about Grimmauld Place, surely he's got the letter by now."

"I imagine he's a tad busy just at the moment," Remus suggested, up to his elbows in soapsuds at the kitchen sink.

"Too busy to be gathering the Order?" Sirius demanded. "What could possibly be more important? There's a war starting, Remus!"

Remus turned and looked at Sirius, stomping back in forth in a kitchen far too small to be paced in. "Sirius, would you sit down?"

Sirius stopped, but only to lean against the worktop opposite Remus, cross his arms and glower.

"Look," Remus said. "I know you don't like having to wait. But everything is under control for the moment. Dumbledore is clearly working on a plan, Harry's safely with his aunt and uncle for now, and–"

Sirius interrupted, "And now I suppose you're going to tell me–"

"–I'm sure everything's all right."

"–that everything will be all right," Sirius finished at almost the same time.

They looked at each other.

"My apologies for being predictable," Remus said. The piercing way Sirius was staring at him was making him uncomfortable.

"Aren't you the least bit concerned what's going to happen?" Sirius demanded. "Voldemort's _back_, and he's after Harry. It's all starting again! How can you just stand there and – and do the washing up?"

Remus shook soapy water from his forearms and cast Sirius a sardonic look. "Would not doing the washing up help us to stop Voldemort, then?"

"This!" Sirius burst out. "This… thing that you do, ugh. You never get properly upset. You just get more _sarcastic_."

"Well, excuse me for not performing up to the Sirius Black standard of temper tantrums. Tell me, do you think it would be help our cause if I did?"

Sirius pointed a finger at him. "See, this? _This_ is why people in the Order suspected you. You never react to things like you'd expect a normal person to react!"

Oh, so they were having that conversation after all, were they?

Remus dried his hands on a dishtowel, slowly and deliberately, then leaned back against the edge of the sink and crossed his arms as well. "Is that so? And I suppose it had nothing to do with the fact that I happened to be the Dark creature in the group?"

"What? Of course not," Sirius said, but his eyes slid away from Remus'.

An old anger welled up in Remus, long buried, but with embers, it seemed, that still burned.

But he kept his voice level. "Oh? You can honestly stand there and tell me the reason I was suspected of being the spy in the Order _wasn't_ because of what I am?"

"I didn't think that way, I swear to you! Some of the others might have, but I never thought that."

"I imagine you had some quite logical reason instead. Was it really that my temper wasn't dramatic enough for you? Or perhaps you thought, Huh, that Remus, he's so good at keeping secrets, maybe he's decided to keep a few more just for fun."

Sirius paced two steps, then made himself stop, his body still vibrating with pent-up energy. "No, Remus, look. That some of the others thought that about you – that's because they're stupid. Prejudiced and blind. That I thought it too, even though I knew you… that was unforgivable. But you have to understand, it was such a confused time, such a mess. There was clearly somebody spying on us, and James and Lily and Harry were in danger, and I was desperate to find some answer that made sense."

"How convenient for you, then, that I was right there to point a finger at. I didn't have the luxury of such an easy scapegoat."

Sirius hung his head. "I'm sorry. I'm – I can't tell you how sorry. I was panicking. I didn't know what to think. You were always going off on mission alone, and yes, some of the others suspected you, and the more I heard that, the more I thought, well, maybe that makes sense, because for sure nothing else does…"

Sirius trailed off, looking up at Remus with beseeching eyes. The look of a puppy who knows it's done wrong, but still hopes to be forgiven.

But Remus wasn't feeling particularly merciful. Perhaps that was unfair of him. Sirius, after all, was indeed not the only one who had wrongly suspected him, not by far. But Sirius had been one of his closest friends, his only friends. Sirius should have known.

"That's your excuse?" Remus said. "'Everybody else was doing it'?"

Very quietly, his restless motion now completely stilled, Sirius said, "Believe me when I say I will never forgive myself."

Remus thought of Sirius, in a cold prison cell in Azkaban for _twelve years_, blaming himself every single day for James and Lily's deaths. Blaming himself for having switched Secret Keepers. Blaming himself for having trusted the wrong person. For not having trusted the right one.

Remus couldn't envy him those years. Not even in exchange for his own long years of grief he'd struggled through alone.

Voice jagged with emotion, Sirius said again, "I'm so sorry, Remus."

Remus bowed his head. With his gaze fixed on the grey fibres of his threadbare pullover, he said, "And I forgive you. I imagine you've carried around enough guilt all these years. Don't carry any more on my account." 

"Remus–" Sirius started, then stopped again.

"It's all right," Remus said. "Really. It's all right." He lifted his eyes to meet Sirius', to show that he meant it.

"I wish there were some way I could make up for my mistakes," Sirius said, his voice still very quiet.

Neither of them said anything to that. They both knew the one mistake that really mattered was the one that could never be undone – trusting Peter, unwittingly exposing James and Lily to Voldemort.

Suddenly, Remus couldn't stand to be inside those four walls a minute longer. Or maybe it was being inside his own head that was making him crazy.

"I'm going out for a bit," he said. "I just need to – walk for a bit. Try not to burn down the house while I'm out, okay?"

Sirius gave him a quizzical look. _Are you all right?_

Remus shrugged at him. _Yes. No. I don't know._

"Go ahead and go to sleep," he said. "I'll be back in a while. Don't worry."

Then he left Sirius standing in the kitchen, and went outside.


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

Remus walked for a long time through the rolling Yorkshire fields, finding the stiles and breaks in the fences by instinct, after so many such walks. It was a dark night, the moon barely a sliver and already long since set behind the hills.

As he walked, Remus thought about Sirius, then he thought about James and Lily. Then he tried to think of nothing at all, but simply to become blank and empty and new.

Lily was right – or, that was to say, the imagined Lily in his head was right, the one that was so often Remus' voice of reason. In the end, it didn't matter who had failed whom more, who had made the most fatal mistake. They both should have thought, sooner or later, to suspect Peter. Neither of them had.

Neither of them could change that.

The past was the past. But they were both here now.

When Remus returned to the cottage, after what felt like many hours but was likely only one or two, he let himself in through the recalcitrant front door as quietly as he could. Passing through the small living room, he stopped when he heard a soft snuffling sound.

Sirius, transformed into Padfoot, was asleep in front of the battered old sofa. Not _on_ the sofa, but in front of it, on the tattered rag rug that covered part of the wooden floor.

"Pads," Remus said. "Padfoot. Sirius. Why aren't you in bed?"

The dog snorted, then whuffed.

"Sirius." Remus went over and gently shook Padfoot's shoulder, or what would have been his shoulder, had he currently been in human form. "Come on, wake up."

Padfoot sneezed.

"Sirius."

The dog blinked twice. Then it was Sirius lying there, curled up in a decidedly uncomfortable-looking position on the floor.

"Whuh?" Sirius said, and Remus couldn't help but smile.

"You daft nutter, what are you doing on the floor? Let's get you to bed."

Still blinking, Sirius pushed himself up from the rug. "Huh, right, yeah," he muttered.

"Come on," Remus said, and steered him back towards the guest bedroom. Sirius stumbled as he went through the door, still mostly asleep.

"G'night," he muttered. "Thanks, Moony."

"Good night," Remus said, and damn it all if he wasn't smiling fondly as he watched Sirius fumble his way to bed.

In the morning, by the time Remus made his way to the kitchen, Sirius was already at the table and wide awake.

"What about you?" Sirius asked, as soon as Remus stepped into the room.

"Sorry?"

"What about you? Like you said last night, you didn't have someone there to scapegoat. I suspected you, but _you_ knew it wasn't you. Who in the Order did you suspect? For that matter, why didn't you, at least, suspect Peter?"

Remus stopped and leaned against the worktop, at the furthest end of the small room from Sirius. He hadn't been prepared to resume this conversation. Not before a cup of tea, at least.

"Really, Remus," Sirius pressed. "I know all too well what I was thinking during those last months. I want to know who _you_ thought it was."

"I didn't want to believe it," Remus muttered, ashamed.

"Believe what?"

"That there was a spy. I didn't want to believe there was a spy." Remus forced himself to look at Sirius. "It was clear there was someone keeping close track of our movements, but I'd got myself mostly convinced it was someone watching us from outside, someone not in the Order. Not one of us. My same old failing – I just wanted for us all to be friends."

When all was said and done, his failure had been the worse one. Rather than suspecting the wrong person, he had failed to see that he should be suspecting someone at all.

"I couldn't bring myself to think that of any of you," Remus said, his gaze once again directed at the scuffed wooden boards of the kitchen floor. "If I had done, if I had taken the threat more seriously – they might still be alive."

"Remus–" Sirius said.

"So don't think that I blame you," Remus said in a rush. "Or if I do, know that I'm wrong to do so. You're not to blame any more than anyone else."

"I–" Sirius said, sounding confused. "I– Thank you. I mean, I disagree, and you're wrong, you're not to blame, but…thank you."

"I am to blame," Remus said. "I wasn't blinded by anything else; there's no excuse for me not to have seen what Peter was doing, how he played us all. How he always had such a tidy story prepared to explain everything he did."

"_Fucking_ Peter and his fucking excuses!" Sirius burst out.

"Yes," Remus said. "New girlfriend, so in love, always running off to see her…"

"Yeah, some girlfriend," Sirius growled. "_Voldemort_ was his fucking girlfriend. I'm such an idiot. Don't know how I let him fool me for even a second."

"Yes, you do," Remus said. "He was able to fool you because he was Peter, and that's what he did. A word of praise here, a compliment there… 'Oh, you're so good at that spell,' he'd say. 'Would you teach it to me?' Getting you to help him, so you'd feel you had a kind of responsibility to him." Bile rose in Remus' throat at the very thought of it. All the times he'd let Peter flatter him into feeling protective and benevolent.

Sirius' eyes widened in recognition of what Remus was saying. "He did, didn't he? 'Sirius, it's amazing how you stand up to people,'" he mimicked. "'I wouldn't have had the daring to leave my family like that, but you just went for it. How do you do it?'"

"'Great match today, James!'" Remus added. "'Amazing flying! You've got to teach me that dodging move sometime!'"

Sirius' expression was darkening by the minute. "'Lily, I'm so hopeless at Potions, and you're such a genius at it. I would have failed for sure if you hadn't helped me.'"

"You can't blame yourself," Remus said. "I failed to see it just as much as you did."

"We should have killed him," Sirius spat. "We had the chance, we had the chance to wipe that scum off the face of the Earth, and we just handed it away."

Remus blinked at the sudden vehemence in Sirius' voice. "We didn't just 'hand it away,' Sirius. We agreed not to do it, at Harry's request."

Sirius peered out at him through the dark curtain of his hair and for a moment, he looked every bit as deranged, every bit as much the escaped murderer, as he had that night in the Shrieking Shack. "Oh, you didn't hear?" he asked.

The chill in his voice sent a shiver down Remus' spine.

"Hear what?" Remus asked carefully.

"How it was that Voldemort got himself back to power so suddenly. He didn't pull that off alone. He pulled it off because when we let that rat live, he scuttled straight back to his master and nursed him back to health, got him all the things he needed so he could get himself a body again. That fucking rat was in the graveyard that night. Harry saw him."

Remus felt the blood drain from his face. He leaned one hand against the worktop behind him. "We did suspect he would do that," Remus suggested faintly.

"Yeah, well, and now he has. Thanks to you and me, he's alive and now Voldemort is back and in the flesh."

Remus swallowed. "Still. It was Harry's choice to make. Harry didn't feel James would have wanted us to become murderers for his sake."

"Then Harry was _wrong_."

"We can't know that," Remus said. "Anyway, it doesn't matter now, Sirius! What's done is done. We have to move on. We just do everything we can from here on."

Sirius sucked in a long, hard breath. He looked like he was working hard not to fly apart completely. Finally he said, "All right, yeah. Yes. But I tell you what, Dumbledore better write back _soon_ and tell us what we can start doing."

Looking at him, Remus believed it. Another few days of this frustration and waiting, and who could say what Sirius might get it in his head to do.

For a few moments, they both just breathed, Sirius trying to get himself under control, and Remus biting his tongue against admonishing him, against saying anything about just where Sirius' propensity for rash action had got him in the past. Anything he could say, Sirius already knew, and surely thought about every day.

"Sirius," he said finally, tentatively. "I know this is frustrating, I know this doesn't seem like an ideal situation right now, but – I'm glad nonetheless that you're here. I'm glad you got out, I mean. That you're back here with the rest of us."

Sirius gave him a startled, wry smile. "Yeah. It's been good to see you again, too, Remus."

Taken by surprise, Remus thought, _Yes_. He had meant he was glad for Sirius' sake that he was finally out of Azkaban; glad for Harry's sake, too, that he could finally know his godfather.

But, yes – Remus was glad for his own sake as well. Could he ever have imagined he would one day be here, chatting with Sirius Black in the kitchen of an old cottage in Yorkshire as if it were the most normal thing in the world?

Remus smiled at the strangeness of it, yet the ordinariness of it, too. Sirius was gazing into space, thoughtful, so Remus stepped the rest of the way into the kitchen and began fixing himself breakfast and a cup of tea.

"Would you pass the sugar, Padfoot?" he asked, as he poured boiling water into an old chipped mug, and Sirius caught his eye and then they were both smiling at the sheer delightful banality of it.

He could get used to having a friend again, Remus mused, as he walked into the village for his day's tutoring sessions. He could get used to sharing his space with someone, eating meals together, bickering good-naturedly over whose turn it was to cast a few cleaning charms around the place. Being _friends_. It was a surprisingly easy thing to slip back into, even after all these years.

Remus arrived back at the cottage after his day's work to find late afternoon sunshine slanting through the trees and Sirius pacing in front of the doorstep.

"Remus!" Sirius said, as soon as Remus stepped into the clearing. "Look!"

He waved the unfurled scroll of a letter in Remus' direction, too quickly for Remus to catch anything more than an impression of familiar, spidery handwriting.

"We're to head to Grimmauld Place immediately," Sirius said, focused and intent, when Remus reached him. "Tonight. We should leave tonight. It won't take long to pack everything up, right? It's not like there's much we need to bring along."

"We?" Remus asked.

"Yes, obviously, we. You weren't going to _stay _all the way out here, were you? When there's work to be done for the Order? You're going to come live at the old house with me, didn't I say? There's more than enough room. It'll be our headquarters, Dumbledore's agreed. He's coming by there tomorrow to start getting everything set up. There's so much to _do_, Remus, don't just stand there!"

But Remus did just stand there, for a moment, in the clearing between the trees in the afternoon light, looking at Sirius fired up with purpose and energy, more alive than Remus had seen him in years.

So many years. As he stood and watched Sirius grinning madly into the sunlight, Remus felt all that time kaleidoscope around him, the early years at school, the later years with the Order. Happy memories of laughing together with James and Lily, tense memories of battles, heartache, loss.

He thought of Dumbledore, calling them aside late in their seventh year to tell them of a secret organisation he was creating, and that they were invited to join it as soon as they'd finished school. He thought of Harry, surprised and disappointed to learn that Remus would not be returning to teach the next year at Hogwarts.

He heard Lily's voice in his mind, saying, _Does it matter, really? You're both here now._ And James grinning ear to ear, exulting, _No, seriously, Remus, he's been here almost three full days and you haven't swatted that great mangy mutt with a newspaper even once?_

Remus felt a smile breaking across his face. He caught Sirius' eye.

"Yes," he said. "Yes, all right. It might be completely daft, but yes, why not? Let's pack up and leave tonight."

Sirius grinned back. "That's the spirit, Moony. Go pack your suitcase. I'll wait here."

Remus stepped past him into the house, and in the cool, quiet shade inside the doorway, he stopped and closed his eyes for just a moment.

The Order was reconvening. There was work, at last, important work to be done. Sirius would be there, and Harry, and Dumbledore, and many other people Remus respected and cared about.

Despite the dire situation growing around them, Remus couldn't help think that maybe, just maybe, there were also a few small things that would be all right.

Who could say what this next year would bring?


End file.
